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Having worked in sales management for over ten years in the FMCG industry, I have experienced various company types and positions, including foreign-funded, joint venture, and private enterprises. I deeply feel that to break through sales bottlenecks, one must master the following nine disciplines.
1. Market Planning Ability Those who conquer the world must first strategize the overall situation before focusing on individual moves (the big picture determines the final outcome).
For city managers to achieve performance breakthroughs, market planning ability must first address the following eight aspects:
- Market Layout: Identify core markets, model markets, key markets, secondary key markets, potential markets, tough markets, and blank markets within the city.
- Customer Layout: Based on the current state of the city's business formats, implement a customer layout strategy of multiple customers per city with professional complementarity.
- Channel Layout: According to the channel characteristics of different cities, consolidate strong channels, improve weak channels, develop blank channels, and further solidify the channel foundation.
- Category Layout: Focus on the company's strategic categories and create unique categories for individual cities.
- Item Layout: Adapt to local conditions and manage product items effectively.
- Terminal Layout: Ensure a reasonable layout of terminal stores across the city, striving for "blossoming across the entire city."
- Personnel Layout: Optimize human resource allocation based on season and channel expansion progress.
- Resource Layout: Allocate city expenses proportionally based on the different shares of total performance across regions, channels, and stores.
2. Product Coverage In 2006, Shuanghui's sales reached 24 billion yuan, Coca-Cola 15 billion yuan, Wrigley 2.4 billion yuan, and Mengniu, Master Kong, etc., also achieved impressive figures.
When we see these numbers, we are amazed. Why are their sales so high? How did they achieve this?
In fact, they simply did the following four things well:
- Expansion of all-channel outlets
- Effective distribution of SKUs
- Distribution in county-level markets
- Successful launch of new products
3. Channel Construction In market competition, channel resources are shared but limited. Whoever occupies more channel resources will have the largest market share and the highest sales volume.
In the process of channel construction, we must first clearly understand the composition of the channel pyramid: the tip is modern terminal channels, the waist is traditional terminal channels, and the base is wholesale markets and circulation channels. Next, analyze the channel resource status of target cities. Finally, optimize strong channels, improve weak channels, and activate blank channels.
4. Terminal Performance Consumers' awareness of FMCG brands often begins at the terminal. Therefore, FMCG companies must invest more effort in terminal performance to enhance brand awareness and showcase a good brand image. Terminal performance includes terminal visibility, display standards, and the quality of terminal personnel. The quality of terminal performance directly impacts brand building. Many emerging brands, although not advertised in newspapers or on TV, still sell well in the market. For example, Lehui Seaweed successfully leveraged terminal performance to build brand awareness and drive sales.
Terminal mediaization and terminal vividness are the secrets of many companies' success at the terminal.
5. Competitive Product Terminal Information Analysis Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated.
When you are unaware of competitors' information (sales policies, expense intensity, expense direction, human resource allocation), you will be "at a loss where to start."
The media for competitive intelligence dissemination is increasingly diverse, making it more confusing for market personnel. Competitors' promotional directions will be reflected in terminal information release channels in stages, such as DM flyers, leaflets, X-stands, banners, and other media that carry information about the brand, culture, products, concepts, technology, and promotions. By aggregating, analyzing, and summarizing the various information released by competitors, a terminal competitive intelligence system can be formed. This serves as a tool to alert market personnel to early potential threats, providing relevant decision-makers with intelligence on possible opportunities and dangers, enabling them to formulate policies with precision. Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated.
6. Distributor Service and Management When discussing distributor service and management, we must first establish a viewpoint: we sell through distributors, not to distributors.
"Customer first, win-win future" is our established customer culture.
Managing Customers:
- Sales area management
- Purchase-sale-inventory management
- Product portfolio management
- Channel width and depth management
- Outlet coverage management
- Price system management
- Sales database management
- Expense investment management
- Key store management and maintenance
- Promotional activity management
Serving Customers:
- Team training assistance
- Implementation and follow-up of resource allocation
- Monthly profit analysis for customers
- Market planning
- Store inspection and supervision
- Inventory management
- Key single-store planning
- Promotional activity evaluation
- KA store payment reconciliation
- Collecting competitive product information
- Key account negotiation
- Downstream customer development
7. Team Execution Whether a company can achieve sustained success depends not only on correct strategies and tactics but also to a large extent on execution capability. As the company develops, it will inevitably face organizational expansion and business growth. Ensuring the overall operational efficiency of the enterprise and promoting institutionalized, standardized, and refined management becomes increasingly important. Therefore, forming a unified and swift execution chain is urgent, so that decisions are truly implemented and effectively executed. This is necessary for achieving strategic goals and for rapid development in the right direction.
Execution: A process with good results is called execution!
"A Message to Garcia" and West Point's "No Excuse" both emphasize execution. But this is ideal execution. To truly improve execution, marketing teams must start from reality and implement execution bit by bit, so that execution does not become empty talk. Execution is related to the success or failure of the enterprise. To build marketing team execution, remember the "Two Degrees" rule (attitude + speed = success) and adhere to the "Four Determinations." The so-called Four Determinations means that during execution, you must set goals, determine responsible persons, set standards, and establish assessment.
8. Career Planning Personal development plans must be aligned with the overall development interests of the team, and current development interests must be unified with future development interests. As professional managers, we must continuously adjust and correct our goals. We must promote the company's development through our own efforts to achieve self-growth and self-realization, rather than focusing only on personal interests while ignoring the organization's future. Professional managers also need to connect the present with the future, not overemphasizing immediate interests while neglecting future development, nor focusing only on the future while losing sight of the present.
Your current position was determined by your decisions three years ago! If you want better development, you must start your career planning now, because it will determine your position three years from now!
9. Continuous Learning Ability Academic qualifications do not represent ability; learning ability is competitiveness.
Our Yake Company has always advocated the slogan "Create a learning-oriented enterprise team," hoping that everyone can continuously improve their quality through planned and purposeful learning to adapt to the needs of enterprise development. As professional managers, we must not only pay attention to learning content but also know the key purposes of learning.
- When learning from success and failure, the key is to study the process and methods.
- When learning from books, the key is to comprehend the principles.
- When learning from the competitive environment and competitors, the key is to respond quickly.
Only after understanding the three key purposes of learning can you improve learning speed and efficiency, and quickly transform learning into action and productivity.
Summary:
- Three Essentials: Intensive cultivation of terminal markets, mastery of industry knowledge, and shrewd expense planning.
- Four Understandings: Understand market characteristics, product selling points, channel characteristics, and competitive product information.
- Five Organizations: Organized with capability, structured with rules, combined with strength, established with responsibility, and operated with care.
- Six Knows: Know planning, know operations, know management, know display, know negotiation, know integration.
- Seven Highs: High team stability, high team execution, high customer quality, high growth rate, high performance volume, high market share, high salary levels.
If professional managers are strong, the enterprise is strong; if the enterprise is strong, the country is strong. Whether in state-owned, private, or foreign enterprises, managers will determine the future of the enterprise, and even the future of an industry or a country.
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